Off Trek

The TV show Firefly was an anti-Star Trek of sorts. While both shows featured crews traveling through space, the ill-tempered pirates on Firefly stuck together for high-stakes thefts, not Trekkie-style peace-spreading missions. But both had equally rabid fan bases. Like the original Trekkies, whose letter-writing campaigns turned a canceled TV show into a convention-worthy, multimedia franchise, fans of the short-lived Firefly series (created by Joss Whedon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame) gave the show enough of a cult following that Universal bankrolled the spinoff movie Serenity, named after the shows rickety spaceship. The movie finds the crew accidentally pulled into what might be a noble mission  but without Star Trek preachiness, and with plenty of violence and black humor. Meet the Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock of the Me Generation.
Fri., Dec. 22, 11:55 p.m.; Sun., Dec. 23, 11:55 p.m., 2006